All the Cop's Horses, and All the Cop's Men
by fialka62
Summary: ...can't put Kate Beckett together again. 4x01 spec, almost certainly AU.
1. Chapter 1

_This has been hanging around my hard drive unfinished since the finale. I sort of know where it's going and sort of don't, but one thing is, it'll be short, because there's not much time left to finish it now__. Consider this a companion piece to The Trouble With Paris, which *does* have to wait to see what canon delivers. This is the other side of the story, AU, hiatus bridge, wishful thinking and all that. _

_The prologue was__ written long before the sneaks came out, and appears here unchanged. Sometimes there is only one logical way to go. I can tell you the rest is certainly not going to happen in 4x01._

_Unbe__ta'd. I'll probably regret that :)_

0—0—0

It begins with Josh stirring rehydrated mashed potatoes in the hospital cafeteria. It ends with him in the surgical observation deck, watching the BP monitor spiking again, watching Sam Kovaks - the only thoracic trauma surgeon in New York Josh would trust to do this better than him - stepping back from the table, hands drenched in blood, waiting for his interns to stabilise the patient so he can finish the job. It's all routine, one surgeon watching another perform his daily miracle. It's all routine, except the GSW to the chest they unloaded from the ambulance four hours ago has turned out to be a woman Josh last saw asleep in his bed.

0-0-0

It begins for Castle in the waiting room, surrounded by his family, hers, real and constructed. Her father, pacing without realising he's walking. His brothers-in-arms, stiff in their dress blues, her closest friend stubbornly wiping streaming eyes. His child presses against his side, still shaking, trying to comfort him as she comforts herself; his mother does the same, clearly thinking of scotch.

It ends with the surgeon telling Jim Beckett that his daughter's 'one tough cookie', that she's still hanging on.

It ends, but it doesn't; there's still Castle banging his way into recovery, two nurses vainly pulling on his arms, until the sight of the doctor bending over the woman covered in machinery brings him up short. Of course it's Josh. Of course it would be Josh. Castle's own attempt at heroism was futile, a moment too late, though god knows he'd have taken that bullet if he could. So Josh will be the hero. It fits the story well. So what if Kate Beckett spends her life with another man, as long as she still has a life to spend?

It ends, but it doesn't. And so it goes on.


	2. Chapter 2

_Again, this was already written months ago, though I've now incorporated a couple of the medical details supplied by the sneaks. Nothing that would give away anything important unless you somehow thought Beckett wasn't going to live. _

0-0-0

Josh straightens and motions to the nurses to let the man go, to go away. Castle looks like every distraught relative he's ever seen, but Josh has the stethoscope and the scrubs that give him the authority to see his lover as long and as often as he wants. And so he lets Castle in, determined to prove to Kate's father, to all of them, that's he's the better man.

Castle looks like he might throw up. No, what he looks like, really, is a man whose entire world has come crashing to the ground. He has to swallow three times before he can say, 'how bad?'

They both stare at the woman on the bed, tubed and wired, eyelids taped shut to prevent the corneas from drying out. Her slim body jerks with each gasp of the ventilator, as if uninhabited. In a way, perhaps it is. There's only one chance Kate has of surviving the next 24 hours, and that's in a coma so deep there's no chance of her waking to fight the ventilator, to experience the vast amount of pain she would otherwise be in. Josh knows the use of medical coma; it's an uncharted field, full of unpalatable side effects, not the least of which is the fading ratio of chance they'll get her back undamaged at the end. He hates that this is the best, the only option, as much as he's grateful to Kovacs for having decided to take the chance.

'Millimeters,' Josh finally answers. 'The bullet damaged her heart, but didn't pierce it. Otherwise, we wouldn't be standing here.'

'But she's tough,' Castle adds, supplying the positive spin Josh can't. 'She'll make it.'

Josh could mention the times her blood pressure spiked (five) and the times her heart just simply gave out (twice). He could tell Castle about holding his breath, hands pressed against the observatory window, imagining her trapped under earth, clawing her way back. He could tell him that she's more than tough. She's ferocious. And that even so, it's probably not going to be enough. It's probably not going to stop her heart from giving out again. He's seen it too often, the patient who survives the great heroic surgery only to slip away quietly a day or two later, the ferocious will finally worn down, overcome. It's as if they live only long enough for the unconscious brain to assess how deeply the body is injured, to slowly calculate the possibility of returning to a life worth living, finally reaching the inevitable conclusion that there is damage beyond repair. Sedated to a point of zero, it's possible Kate's brain won't be able to make that calculation. It's also just as possible that she'll never calculate anything again.

'She has a chance.' It's the best Josh can do, though Castle seems startled he's not being more hopeful about that. 'They'll keep her in a deep coma to give the heart muscle some time to heal. Then, if she's stable and there's no infection or other complications, they'll remove the ventilator and let her wake up on her own.'

'Thank you,' Castle says softly, hands clenching into fists. 'For saving her.'

It could end with that, with one man's gratitude to another, except Josh can't take someone else's credit. 'That was Kovacs, the surgeon that you met. This isn't Grey's Anatomy. We don't operate on our friends.'

'Then thank you for letting me see her.'

'Her father listed you as immediate family,' Josh answers. Her father, who had not known who Josh was. If Kate was awake to ask, Josh would want to know why her father doesn't seem to know she's been seeing someone for almost a year. But she's not, so he can't. 'If that's what he considers you, it's not my place to say you're not.'

Castle's gaze steadies, holds his. 'You could have said something. You didn't.'

Josh draws in a deep, long breath. He doesn't like this man. He never has. He's The Rival, the one Kate is probably in love with, but for whatever reason, won't admit it, even to herself. If she says Castle's just a friend, then Josh has to accept him as her friend. Except friends don't let friends get obsessed with things to the point they get shot over them, and if Castle really was her friend he'd have goddamned told Josh what was happening to Kate _before _it got out of control, or someone should have, except he, Josh, doesn't seem to exist-

A PVC bleeps from the monitor, distracting him from the rage building again. Kate's heartbeat spikes, then falters, as if she can hear what he's thinking, as if she's suddenly become aware of exactly who is standing on either side of her bed, despite all the effort she's made to keep them separate. Josh keeps his eye on the monitor, counting the peaks for a full minute, until he's sure they've returned to steady normal. Long enough to reassure himself it was a random occurrence, to commit himself to what really matters, at least for now. 'I'll make sure she gets the best care we can give. You guys should all go home, you've been here for hours.'

Castle shifts, indicates the chair by the bed. 'I will, I just want to sit with her for awhile.'

'She won't know you're here.'

'I'll know.' The other man turns and looks at Josh for just a moment. He looks desperate. Exhausted, the skin under his eyes sagging down his cheeks. 'Kate's with you. I understand that. Let's just get her through this, and then I'll leave you two alone.'

Josh looks out at the ICU station, where two nurses are watching the patient monitors with impassive faces. Nadia and Carla. If they've been watching the little scene going on in Kate's room, they're not the type to gossip, and the video links don't have sound anyway. But their job is to keep an eye on twenty desperately ill patients, not just one doctor's girlfriend. And the truth is that Josh is on duty for another nine hours, and all the literature says that medical coma patients do best when there's some continued form of stimulation. If he can't be here, it's better for Kate to have Castle's company than none at all.

'I can agree to that,' he says to Castle, and the other man smiles through downturned lips.

0—0—0

_Reviews are like chocolate: not necessary for life, but awfully yummy when you get some._


	3. Chapter 3

_From here on I'm literally writing as I post, which is definitely an experiment for me, so if you're reading, do please let me know. _

0—0—0

For a long time now, Jim Beckett has been alone. Not just in the romantic sense, although there's that as well, and not really anything he's looking to remedy, though he might be open to suggestion if the right suggestion happened to come along. As it is, it hasn't. The friends he had when Jo was alive were mostly hers, or so it would seem by the way they mostly drifted off after the funeral. For those that tried to stick around, well, let's just say the alcohol builds some surprisingly solid walls, and since he's been sober it's been easier to keep moving forward rather than ever looking back.

The old friends come out of the woodwork now, although much more welcome than that simile would sound. Katie's shooting has been splashed all over the newspapers, the evening news, and it didn't take more than a day or two for them to dig up Johanna's case and splash around as well. He knows this because their old friends have told him this is how they found out, not because he's read the articles himself, although he's seen her picture in the folded pages held by others as they read. It's her academy graduation picture, the one where she looks brash and fresh and only a little scared. He wasn't there to see her in her dress uniform that day; they were barely speaking and he hadn't yet been forgiven for the mess he'd made of her graduation from college.

Her dress uniform - is it the same one? if anything, she's leaner now than she was then, but she's always been a wiry little thing, even as a baby, all eyes and arms and legs. He remembers poking at the bundle held against Jo's chest, marvelling at how long those tiny fingers were, and then they wrapped around his as if to say 'yes, yes, I get it, stop poking at me, dad' and that was so very much the character of their relationship ever after. Katie, running, always running full tilt at the world. Only then she'd been running at it laughing, so it had mattered less that she pushed him away when he wanted to fuss over her, that she ran when he wanted her to stand still and just stop reaching, stop growing, just _stop_ and be his little girl.

And then she did stop, but it was too late. She was too big to pick up and cuddle, to carry bonelessly asleep against his shoulder, her long legs dangling against his chest. Too big to curl up in his lap while he rocked her, and petted her, and called her Katiecat so she'd smile through her tears. And he was in no condition to help, even if he had remembered how to cuddle his now very tall daughter, even if she had remembered that once upon a time his arms were where she'd go when the world she was always running at threw a tripwire in her path.

They seem to have gotten that much back these last couple of years. They still don't talk about a lot of things they probably should be able to talk about by now, but she came to him once when she needed her daddy to be there, and this time he was. Jim supposes he has Richard Castle to thank for that moment of redemption, that turning the corner, bringing his little girl back into his arms.

Really, it's only that moment of redemption that's keeping him from the bottle now. That, and Castle's mother, grimly remaining sober beside him as the days grind on and Katie lies somewhere just this side of death, tethered to the world by a plastic tube forcing air into her torn-up lungs. There's nothing to stop Martha from drinking, and he wouldn't ask it, but instead she brings him orange juice (she likes grape) and coke (she likes pepsi) and coffee (that they both like, but not from the cafeteria here, where it's boiled brown crayons, and saying that to him brought the only smile that's passed Jim's lips since he saw his little girl get shot).

His daughter, her son, tethered by bonds neither of them understand, but Jim and Martha, they sit side by side in a fearful silence, both of them understanding far too much.


End file.
